Dongsheng Liu learned polymer sciences in University of Science and Technology of China and graduated with a B.S. degree in 1993. He then worked as a research associate in the Institute of Chemistry, CAS for six years and earned his Master degree on polymer chemistry in 1999. From 1999 to 2002, he finished his Ph.D study on the self-templated DNA circularization in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the supervision of Professor Albert S. C. Chan. In 2003, he joined the Chemistry Department of Cambridge University as a postdoc research associate, worked on DNA nanotechnology with Professor Shankar Balasubramanian. In 2005, he joined the National Centre for NanoScience and Technology, China as a principle investigator and in June 2009, he moved to the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University as a full professor. He was awarded the 1st "CCS-RSC Young Chemist Award" in 2008 and was invited as FRSC in 2011, the 7th CCS-BASF Youth Innovation Prize in 2014. His research mainly focuses on DNA molecular machines and DNA based smart materials.

The Frame-Guided Assembly

Yuanchen
Dong and Dongsheng Liu*

Department of
Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

E-mail: liudongsheng@tsinghua.edu.cn

In molecular self-assembly molecules form organized
structures or patterns. The control of the self-assembly process is an
important and challenging topic. Inspired by the cytoskeletal-membrane protein
lipid bilayer system that determines the shape of eukaryotic cells, we
developed a frameguided assembly process as a general strategy to prepare
heterovesicles with programmed geometry and dimensions. This method offers
greater control over self-assembly which may benefit the understanding of the
formation mechanism as well as the functions of the cell membrane.

Most importantly, our recent studies show that the rule
of "frame guided assembly" could be applied to various materials such as bock
copolymers, small molecules including surfactants and lipids. These results
demonstrated that the strategy is a general method in self-assembly.